Blurring the boundaries between topological and non-topological physical phenomena in dots

• Ano de defesa: 2018
• Autor(a) principal: Candido, Denis Ricardo
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: 2D topological insulators; Cálculo da condutância; Conductance calculation; Cylindrical BHZ quantum dots; Estados de borda triviais protegidos; InAsBi; Isolantes topológicos 2D; Pontos quânticos de BHZ cilíndricos; Protected trivial helical edge states
• Link de acesso: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/76/76131/tde-24092018-150734/

In this thesis, we investigate the electronic structure and transport properties of topologically trivial and non-trivial cylindrical quantum dots (QDs) defined by further confining InAs1-xBix/AlSb quantum wells (QWs). First we predict that common III-V InAs0.85Bi0.15/AlSb QWs can become 2D topological insulators (TIs) for well thicknesses dc > 6.9 nm with a topologically non-trivial gap of about 30 meV (> kBT), which can enable room temperature TI applications. Furthermore, we investigate the cylindrical QDs defined from these Bi-based wells by additional confinement, both in the topologically trivial (d < dc) and non-trivial (d > dc) regimes. Surprisingly, we find that topologically trivial and non-trivial QDs have similar transport properties in stark contrast with their 2D counterparts (i.e., a strip). More specifically, through detailed calculations, which involve an analytical solution of the quantum-dot eigenvalue problem, we demonstrate that both trivial and non-trivial cylindrical QDs possess edge-like states, i.e., helical spin-angular-momentum-locked quantum states protected against non-magnetic elastic scattering. Interestingly, our trivial QDs exhibit these geometrically robust helical states, similarly to topologically non-trivial QDs, over a wide range of system parameters (e.g., dot radius). We also calculate the circulating currents for the topologically trivial and non-trivial QDs and find no substantial differences. However, we note that ordinary III-V or II-VI cylindrical QDs (i.e., QDs not formed from a BHZ model + confinement) do not feature robust edge-like helical states. We further consider topologically trivial and non-trivial QDs with four edge-like states and calculate their two-terminal conductance G via a standard Green-function approach. For both trivial and non-trivial QDs we find that G shows a double-peak resonance at 2e2/h as a function of the dot radius R and gate voltage Vg controlling the dot energy levels. On the other hand, both trivial and non-trivial QDs can have edge-like and bulk state Kramers pairs coexisting at the same energy within the bulk part of their discrete spectra. In this case, G displays a single-peak resonance at 2e2/h as the four levels (two edge states and two bulk states now) become degenerate at some particular parameter values R = Rc and Vg = Vgc for both topologically trivial and non-trivial QDs. We also extend our investigation to HgTe-based QDs and find similar results.